What this is
backBone Brief is a publication about self-hosting: plain-English, opinionated writing about self-hosted software, for people who actually run it.
One person writes it. Every piece starts from the primary source and links to it, never from another publication's summary of it. The opening and the closing of a piece are the writer's own read of the thing; the middle is there to give you the mechanics — who is affected, and what changes for them.
## what gets written
Not everything that happens. A release that changes how something behaves gets a piece of its own; a quiet point release gets nothing. Deciding which is which is most of the work, and it is a judgment, not a rule.
## how the desk chooses
Every candidate is judged on five things: whether it matters to someone running their own services, what a reader can actually do with it, whether something changed, who is affected, and whether it is timely. The desk ranks the day's candidates against those questions. “Ranked” means the desk chose what was worth your time, not that there is a leaderboard. Theweekly edition is the visible shortlist.
## instead of what you pay for
The swap shop answers the other question: not what happened this week, but what to run instead of the software you already pay for. 96 brands, a verdict on each, and the honest cost of every replacement.
## what it follows
Self-hosted software end to end: media servers, photo libraries, home automation, networking, storage and backups — and the releases that break them. Among the projects covered: Immich, Jellyfin, Home Assistant, Nextcloud, Paperless-ngx, Frigate, Tailscale and Grafana.
## corrections
A published piece is never silently edited. If something was wrong, the notice goes at the top of the article, above the first paragraph, and stays there. The corrections page has the policy and the log.
## corrections and tips
If something is wrong, or you have a tip for a story, email admin@backbonebrief.com. Include the article URL, what is wrong, and the source that shows it. Corrections go at the top of the piece; tips are read but not always answered.
## reading it
The RSS feed links to every article and is the only subscription. There is no newsletter. The site has no trackers or analytics, and you do not need an account. New to any of this? The Start here pages take one area at a time, problem first.
One operator, sources on the page, a verdict where a verdict is earned, and no interest in covering everything that ships.